


Lunacy

by ConstanceComment



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Community: makinghugospin, Gen, Hallucinations, Insanity, Kink Meme, M/M, Mental Health Issues, References to Suicide, Schizophrenia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-19
Updated: 2013-02-19
Packaged: 2017-11-29 20:28:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/691103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConstanceComment/pseuds/ConstanceComment
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lunacy, noun. <b>lu•na•cy.</b><br/><i>Plural</i> <b>lu•na•cies.</b></p>
<p><b>1 <i>a</i></b> : insanity<br/><b><i>b</i> :</b> intermittent insanity once believed to be related to phases of the moon<br/><b>2:</b> wild foolishness : extravagant folly<br/><b>3:</b> a foolish act</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lunacy

**Author's Note:**

> This work has been lovingly translated into ру́сский by [Regis](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Regis/pseuds/Regis)! You can find the translation [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1467817).
> 
> Please check the end notes for full warnings.

When Javert closes his eyes, he can still see them. A thousand different ways he can see them, though Valjean holds a special place, special places; standing by the girl, the prostitute, the boy. Old, young. Fiery, angry, self-righteous in his hatred; the prisoner. Deeply, truly penitent, a kind-hearted, self-satisfied smile, an offered rosary; the mayor presiding. Valjean, leaping from the hospital balcony, brandishing a stake of wood like a piece of the true cross.

But there are the others, too, that haunt Javert; the woman, the child, the boy. The boy, who alerted him to the Patton-Minette with the open face and the trembling hands. The prostitute, with her missing teeth and the broken pride, the consumptive wreck dying in that lonely hospital. The young girl Valjean left there to find, her large eyes wide in her small frame, spirited away for years while Javert fell into his Parisian duties.

In Toulon, the prisoner was one of many. In Montreuil-sur-Mer, the mayor was a saint, held aloft from the workings of his people and the prostitute was just another victim of the night, another shadow of the world. Madeleine took notice of the whore the way that many did not, but he was always that sort of man, the mayor. Madeleine looked for redemption in other people as if their faces were mirrors and he were a desperate sinner, though Javert would not see the aptness in his comparison until later. For him to notice a prostitute was only par for the course.

At the hospital, the nuns had looked strangely at Javert when he stormed into the empty ward. He assumed then it was because of the noise he made, running in. The sternness of his brow. Neither assumption was correct, but Javert had not known then what he knows now. Valjean had leapt through the open window, eyes wide with the angry truth of Javert’s confession, and the whore had expired on the bed behind them. Javert had stormed back out of the hospital in pursuit; he had not seen the glance the nuns sent him, the prayers they said on his behalf at his departure.

It had almost been surprising to see them again, Valjean and the child. _‘They have aged,’_ Javert remembers thinking, but of course they had aged, it is only natural to age, to grow old. Had he himself not done the same in the intervening years? No, it was not strange that they had grown old.

Just as it was not strange to see Valjean at the barricade, invisible in his stolen soldier's uniform, eyes burning with something Javert could not name, something like hate, like pity, like the glare of the sun through the clouds.

Javert does not remember being set free. The negotiations themselves blur in his mind, indistinct in his mind here in the mist above the Seine. Javert does remember the flick of the knife through his bindings, perilously close to the veins at his wrists, the shot that rang out above his head. He does not remember the hand that wielded them, that saved his blood from the streets. In its own way, that is damning enough.

Thénardier had not seen them, the man or the boy he dragged behind him, the boy who saved his life the same as the man had; warning gunshots, a bullet sent whizzing overhead. They had saved his life once apiece, but when Javert threw open the gate Thénardier could not see them, no matter how Javert stared from one party to the other. All the while Valjean’s eyes were on Javert, defiant, gentle, old as the stars in the sky and as unfathomable in their unchanging nature.

“You had to have known that you never could catch me,” Valjean is saying, but even two feet away Thénardier cannot hear him.

Javert answers “do not resist arrest-“ but he is not sure to whom he speaks, and Thénardier calls him a madman as he escapes, Valjean's echoing laughter chasing them both from the sewer.

Javert looks down, the Seine stretched out below him. In her waters, he sees old faces rendered impossibly young; the man, the woman, the child, the boy. Javert blinks, they are gone. Javert turns about; the child is dangling from the bridge, her feet kicking into the mist as she slides fluidly from child to woman to child again, her smile constant and sick in the night.

“Why Inspector, we had almost thought you were leaving us-“

Javert jumps. At his back, he feels the phantom hands of a laborer, warm and rough.

“Leaving so soon, inspector?” The familiar voice rumbles, mist tickling at his ear to be the breath of a numbered man-

A tumbling push, the roar of the Seine-

Water, pain-

**Author's Note:**

> It's Javert. There's a suicide. Further warning for mental health issues. Tell me if I missed anything; I'll make sure to tag it..
> 
> From the kinkmeme prompt: " **Javert/Valjean, A Beautiful Mind Fusion**
> 
> What breaks Javert is the realization that the man he has been in love with chasing for most of his life isn't even real."
> 
> A cleaned up version of what I posted there.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Помешательство](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1467817) by [Regis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Regis/pseuds/Regis)




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